Tomorrow Will Be Kinder
by Alexabee
Summary: In the turbulent years leading up to the birth of Panem, the world's crops have been all but destroyed. Facing food shortages, Peeta Mellark struggles to run the family bakery while singlehandedly raising his daughter in the wake of losing his wife. Katniss Everdeen has lost something important, too - her memory. Keywords: everlark, AU, single dad Peeta, trauma, HEA


A/n: Thank you, soamazinghere, for your beta work!

* * *

_Hundreds of years ago, the land once known as North America housed a powerful democratic nation that promised its people the freedom to pursue their dreams. This promise was nothing but an illusion that ultimately destroyed the very people who created it, leading them down a path that ended with depleted natural resources, government instability, a crippled economy, and six decades of civil war. Thus, the birth of Panem came as a saving grace to the weary survivors, and ushered in a new era of structure, order and peace._

- Official History of Panem, 3rd edition, page 46.

* * *

-1-

Peeta Mellark brushed the flour off his hands and sat down to look over the bakery's expenses. The price of sugar and butter had always been high, but now the price of imported fruit was soaring as well – something to do with severe weather and climate change, according to the news reports. He knew the residents of his small town would never be able to afford the bakery's lemon tarts or banana cream pies if he raised prices accordingly. Better to spend what little money there was in the budget on plain flour. At least bread was always in demand, no matter how high the price.

Peeta sighed and turned to the bakery's list of products, crossing out any that called for lemons, limes, bananas or coconut. "Maybe next year," he muttered to himself. His old apple tree was no longer producing, either, but at least he'd still be able to gather berries from the forest to make pies come summer.

A sharp knock on the bakery's back door interrupted his work.

"Honey," Peeta called over his shoulder. "Could you see who's there?"

Peeta's little daughter jumped up from the dusty bakery floor where she'd been sprawled out, doing her homework – so proud that she was finally old enough to have _real_ homework – and opened the door.

"Papa, it's the lady with the squirrels."

Peeta's gut tightened into a knot as it did every time she came by.

_Katniss._

"Honey?" Katniss Everdeen asked with a smirk as he approached. She'd overheard Peeta's term of endearment for his daughter. "Wow. Now there's something that hasn't been available in a long time – honey."

"Not since before the war," answered Peeta with a smile. Researchers had assured the nation that while honeybees were nearly extinct, a new, similar breed was being cultivated in laboratories. Their population would hopefully be strong enough to sustain itself in the wild sometime in the next ten to twelve years.

"Honey in tea, honey butter on biscuits, honey cakes…" Katniss reminisced with a sigh.

Peeta couldn't help but chuckle. "You talk about it like it's chocolate."

Of course, he'd never actually tasted chocolate. None of them had. But they'd grown up hearing stories about it from the older generation, who'd enjoyed it before the world's cocoa crops had been destroyed by a vicious blight. Now, when anyone waxed nostalgic about something, people joked that they missed it like chocolate. It had become an idiom, symbolic of anything sweet that had been snatched away from the world.

"Well, it's kind of like that, isn't it? I bet she's not even old enough to know what honey is," Katniss nodded towards the little girl, who had returned to her schoolwork. "How old is she?"

"Just turned seven."

"See? I was right," Katniss returned, gazing at the child. Then her brow furrowed thoughtfully, as if puzzled by something she saw. "What's her name?" she suddenly asked.

Peeta paused for a moment and swallowed hard. It was unusual for his casual banter with Katniss to get personal.

"Cariad. Carrie, for short."

"Cariad," Katniss said slowly, relishing the word as it rolled off her tongue. "That's Welsh," she added a moment later.

"It is!" Peeta exclaimed, surprised. How had she known that? He quickly composed himself. "You… do you recognize it?"

"Oh, maybe," she shrugged, looking away. "I guess there was some Welsh somewhere in my family line."

Katniss had returned to acting nonchalant, but Peeta couldn't help but wonder why she'd suddenly asked those questions about his daughter. Had she been watching his little family from a distance, keeping an eye out for the single baker and his girl? Did she look forward to these moments at the bakery's back door like he did? Did they mean something to her? Was it possible, after all these years…

He felt a flicker of hope rising in his chest, but something kept it at bay - a thick, protective layer of scar tissue that had formed around his heart.

No. He'd loved and lost before. He wouldn't let himself hope for too much this time. Not again.

Peeta cleared his throat. "How much for the squirrels?" he asked, changing the subject.

Katniss held up the pair, tied together by a thick cord, and scowled at them contemplatively. "Thirty-six for both," she decided.

Peeta didn't haggle over the price. He just nodded and reached into his apron pocket, producing the paper money that had recently been put into circulation to replace the coins that had been used before the war. Katniss counted twice, still unused to the new currency, then handed over her kills.

"Thanks. See you next week," she said, glancing once more at the little girl before disappearing down the alley.

Peeta closed the door softly behind him and looked down at the squirrels hanging from his fist. Thirty six. That would've been enough to buy eight lemons. That's forty-eight lemon tarts. Forty-eight lemon tarts he couldn't afford in the first place, but on which he'd just spent the equivalent for two stringy little squirrels.

But he knew that even squirrels were scarce now. Most of the forest animals had vanished after the war, probably having migrated elsewhere in search of more abundant food. And Peeta felt it was important to keep doing business with Katniss, even though her prices were high, if only as an excuse to keep her coming around every so often.

"Papa, can I have a cookie now?" Peeta's daughter asked, tangling herself in his legs and looking up at him with her big, blue eyes. "You promised."

Peeta smiled down at the child and ruffled her silky hair. "Yes, but only one. We're having fried squirrel for dinner."

-2-

Sometimes Peeta's little girl would ask questions about the mother she'd never known.

"Tell me about my Mama," she'd whisper as he tucked her into bed, as if asking for a fairy tale. "Where did she go?"

But Peeta didn't quite have the words to explain it to the child – about the war, the bombs that had reduced the region to ashes and pitted the land with scars. She was too young to be exposed to the truth just yet. The atrocities that haunted his memories were impossible to put into words, anyways, like the stink of charred human flesh, or the indignity he felt as he watched piles of lifeless bodies being shoveled, limp and jiggling, into mass graves.

And then there was the aftermath, which had been just as bad. Even though the history books would say that the war had officially ended on a cold November morning, the survivors knew better. The battle had raged on for years afterwards in the form of debilitating nightmares and flashbacks. It came as no surprise that the people clamored for the first cheap anti-anxiety drug the new government released, desperate for something to blot out their pain. But the medication hadn't been thoroughly tested, and the side effects that followed were devastating: Severe memory loss. Terrifying hallucinations. Violent seizures. Death.

The drug wiped out close to a third of the remaining population. Some people started to suspect the medication was never meant to ease their suffering at all, that it was just another form of biological warfare meant to thin out the remnant and frighten people into submission so there wouldn't be any more uprisings. Already there were whispers of another rebellion.

But Peeta couldn't concern himself with more fighting just yet. He'd been left as a single parent when his daughter was just over a year old. He was all she had in the world – this was his fight, now.

"Mama had to… go away," was all Peeta could ever bring himself to answer, stroking his daughter's soft cheek with the back of his finger.

"Is she coming back?"

"Not right now, Cariad. "

"Will I see her again?"

"I'm sure you will," he assured her.

"Tomorrow?" the little girl asked, unaware of how the hope in her voice broke her father's heart.

"One day."

-3-

The list of food that was no longer available or too expensive to be shipped into the small town was growing by the day: Pork, coffee, tea, fish, potatoes, corn, oil. Even flour was barely affordable anymore. Peeta resorted to trading with his neighbors for local goods like eggs and goat's milk, and saving up what little actual money he had to pay for the bakery's stock orders. But as sales dwindled, his meager little pile of funds grew smaller and smaller. Some days he wasn't even sure if he'd have enough to pay for the next sack of flour, and then a sale late in the day would save him, ensuring at least a few more days of food and shelter for Carrie and himself.

Peeta knew how hard the winter was going to be. He wasn't much of a hunter and didn't have anything more than a tiny vegetable garden out back. If he couldn't afford flour, he'd have nothing to bake, nothing to trade, nothing to sell. No income. No livelihood at all.

He had to learn to set his price. The townspeople were hungry, and they had more mouths to feed at home, but Peeta had his own child to look after. It bothered him to turn all those desperate, hollow-cheeked people away, but what else could he do?

So when Katniss showed up on the back steps one icy winter day, shivering and holding out a pathetically small bird that'd been shot through the neck, his heart sank. From the looks of it, she was struggling, too. She'd lost weight and there were dark circles under her eyes. Had she saved this one little bird, hoping to trade its meat for something heartier to fill her belly, like a warm loaf of bread?

There was just no way he could afford it.

Perhaps Katniss read the answer on his face before he could open his mouth. Or maybe it was his daughter's skinny legs and chapped lips that told her.

"You stuff the bird and we'll share it," she offered. "No one is going to buy it, anyway."

* * *

Peeta dressed the tiny bird with stale bread crumbs and dried herbs. Meanwhile, Carrie hovered around Katniss, who was building up a fire in the hearth. She was shy at first, in awe of the woman with the long, dark braid, clearly waiting for an invitation to come closer.

"Here," Katniss chuckled eventually, picking up the hint. She patted the empty space next to her. "Come sit in front of the fire with me."

Carrie's shy smile broke into a grin as she plunked down on the rug and started chattering away about everything under the sun – from her missing tooth and the big words she'd learned to spell at school, to her imaginary marmalade cat, Buttercup. Peeta laughed softly to himself, watching as his daughter mirrored Katniss' posture and inched towards her so that their legs would touch. Carrie was obviously already crazy about her.

He felt a small stab of pain in his chest and wished it were that easy for him to get close to Katniss. If only he weren't shadowed at every turn by heartbreak.

"What's that?" the child suddenly asked, pointing to a lumpy patch of skin on Katniss' forearm.

Peeta sucked in his breath.

Katniss touched the spot thoughtfully. "It's a scar," she explained. "It means there used to be a cut there."

"Did you get it in the war?" asked the girl.

"Carrie," Peeta warned. His daughter knew better than to pry.

But all Katniss did was answer, "I don't know. Maybe your cat, Buttercup, snuck into my house and scratched me while I was sleeping."

"No!" the child squealed with delicious delight. "Buttercup wouldn't do that!"

"No? Oh, well maybe he thought my arm was a juicy turkey leg and took a big bite!" Katniss grinned playfully.

* * *

Later, after they'd eaten and Carrie had gone to bed - insisting that _Katniss_ come upstairs to see her room, first - Peeta apologized for how spirited his daughter had been.

"It's okay," laughed Katniss, accepting a hot mug of peppermint tea. "She's really sweet. Reminds me a lot of my little sister."

"Sister?"

"Yes. Prim. Primrose," Katniss smiled. "She's- I mean… well, she was…" She trailed off. Then she froze, staring at Peeta with her brow furrowed.

"Katniss?" he asked tentatively.

"Wh… what were we talking about?" she wondered aloud.

"Carrie. We were talking about Carrie. My daughter."

Katniss shook her head as if she didn't recognize the name. "I think I have to go home."

"No! I mean, please, stay," Peeta said, resting a hand on her arm. "Stay and finish your tea."

Katniss blinked at the mug in her hands. "Tea?" she said weakly.

"Yes. Peppermint tea. Nice and hot."

Silence.

"Is there honey in it?" she eventually asked.

Peeta shook his head minutely. "No Katniss. There hasn't been any honey since before the war."

Katniss tensed up and looked blank for a minute. Almost frightened. Then her features relaxed. "Honey. Wow," she laughed. "Now there's something I haven't had in a while. Honey cakes, honey butter on biscuits…"

Peeta only smiled sadly, pretending it was the first time he'd heard her speech.

-4-

"I'm telling you, doctor, she remembered!"

"And I'm telling you, Peeta, it doesn't mean anything," Dr. Aurelius sighed on the other end of the telephone line. "How many times each year do we have this conversation? Look, Katniss recalls the honey from childhood because it was comforting to her. That's why she keeps bringing it up, year after year. Long-term memories are the most stable, so that's not surprising. But it doesn't mean her memory is regenerating."

"But she mentioned Prim! That's never happened before!"

Dr. Aurelius sighed again.

"This drug is like a virus, Peeta. It might lie dormant for years, but it never fully leaves the body. You know that trying to get her to remember things like her sister's death during the war will only put stress on her and provoke another attack. She'll become disoriented and frightened. She'll lose all the progress she's made. Don't push her to talk about Primrose. Don't encourage it. Do you understand?"

Peeta clenched his jaw and said nothing.

"I know the last six years have been hard on you," the doctor continued in a gentler tone. "But you can't force Katniss to remember. It's too dangerous. Focus on the friendship you have with her now and build on that. Think of it as a fresh start."

"Fresh start?" Peeta choked out in a low, venomous voice. "Friendship?" He clutched the receiver tightly in both hands, trembling.

"I'm just saying that it's best to move forwa–"

"This is bullshit! Katniss is my _wife!_" he hissed. How dare this man act so cavalier when he'd lost the love of his life to a drug that was supposed to help her! As if he was just supposed to accept it, forget about their life together and move on! "Do you know what it's like to be a stranger to the woman you love? To see her struggle, knowing there's nothing you can do to help? Do you know what it's like to watch your little girl grow up without her mother?"

"Katniss has serious brain damage, Peeta. I understand your anger, I do. If there were a cure, I would offer it to you. Truly. But intervention would only make it worse." When Dr. Aurelius was met by nothing but silence on the line, he cleared his throat and tried a different tack. "Let's talk about your health for a moment. How have you been sleeping?"

"She recognized the word _cariad_. She knew it was Welsh," Peeta choked, stubbornly ignoring the doctor's last question. Katniss had named their baby girl, after all. She'd looked down at the tiny bundle in her arms and had hummed an old Welsh song, calling the child _cariad_, which meant _my darling_. 'Cariad' had simply stuck.

"It's possible there's a vague partial memory there on an emotional level," the doctor finally conceded. "But it's not a memory the way you and I would have a memory. It would be more like a sense of déjà vu. She still doesn't really remember, Peeta. I'm not telling you this to upset you. There's simply no evidence that survivors experience a spontaneous regeneration of their lost memories. I'm sorry."

Peeta blinked through his tears and looked down at the clutter on the hall table as the doctor spoke. His eyes landed on one of his daughter's drawings - an orange tabby with the words 'To Katniss, love Carrie' printed below in the careful, spindly letters of a child's hand.

"So you're saying it's impossible?" Peeta finally asked.

"More or less."

He swallowed hard. Without another word, he placed the phone gently back in its cradle.

-5-

"Papa, Katniss is at the door! She brought chestnuts!"

Peeta exhaled and tried to muster up a smile.

To stimulate the economy and quell fears of yet another violent uprising, the government had created a new type of protective task force. Peacekeepers, the soldiers were called. And with all the new peacekeepers in town buying bread, things were starting to look up for the bakery.

But even though Peeta now had the resources to trade with Katniss, some days he didn't know if he could face her. He still loved her. It was just too painful to bear.

"Papa, can we buy some chestnuts?"

"We'll see," Peeta answered, pretending to be happy as he approached the back door.

Katniss stood there, snow in her hair and a smile on her face. She held out two hot bags of roasted nuts. "They're a gift," she announced, before he could ask the price. "Think of it as a thank you."

"For what?" Peeta asked, confused.

"For dinner the other night. It was just nice of you to welcome me into your home." Katniss looked down and scuffed the toe of her boot along the top step for a moment. "I don't have any family left, so… I just haven't felt that included in a very long time," she admitted. Then her big, grey eyes flickered up to meet his once more. "So, thank you."

Peeta wanted to cry. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to embrace her and tell her _we are your family_, and _we love you_, and _we want you to come home._

But he was afraid of the damage he might cause if he opened his mouth. So instead he just nodded politely and pretended his heart wasn't breaking.

"Thank you, Katniss!" chirped Carrie through a mouthful of chestnuts.

"Give a nut to Buttercup for me," Katniss said with a wink. She turned and walked down the alley, stopping every few feet to wave to the girl until eventually disappearing around the corner.

After closing the door, Peeta sank down into a kitchen chair. He stared off into space for what seemed like a long time, feeling strangely bittersweet.

He and Katniss were friends. She adored his little girl. Maybe that would have to be enough. Perhaps Dr. Aurelius was right - it was time to move forward and let the past stay in the past.

"Papa, aren't you going to eat your chestnuts?" came a small voice. Carrie appeared beside him, cheeks plump as a chipmunk's.

Peeta laughed aloud at the sight and stroked the child's dark hair, so similar to her mother's. The Katniss he'd known may be gone, but her sweetness lingered on in the form of their daughter.

He'd never forget her. He couldn't if he tried.

"Come here, _my cariad,_" Peeta said affectionately, lifting his little girl onto his lap. "First, I'm going to tell you all about your Mama."

- _Epilogue_ -

It took years. Things got worse before they got better. But eventually the bees came back, and so did the honey.

And so did something else; something no one had been expecting.

Chocolate.

The day that first shipment arrived, the excitement in the town was palpable, like the humidity in the air before a storm. Katniss had gone down to the train station along with everybody else to see the cases of candy bars and cocoa powder being unloaded.

The people actually cheered. Some even had tears in their eyes.

Katniss traded a wild rabbit for half a bar. It didn't look like much – just a plain brown slab – but as soon as she popped a piece into her mouth, it melted against her tongue with a sweet creaminess unlike anything she'd ever tasted before. She could see why it had been so impossible for the older generations to forget.

And then Peeta started making cakes with the stuff. Cakes made of chocolate, filled with chocolate, iced with chocolate and drizzled with chocolate. Then came shortbread dipped in chocolate, chocolate eclairs filled with whipped cream, chocolate doughnuts, and chocolate-strawberry tarts. Everything chocolate practically flew off the shelves. Business was booming for the Mellark Bakery, and Katniss was one of its best customers.

The only thing she didn't like about chocolate was that it seemed to be giving her unsettling dreams.

One stormy night, she awoke with a start, gasping for breath. It hadn't been a nightmare that time, just a dream so vivid it seemed real. It was the same one that had been plaguing her for weeks.

There was a baby in her arms. She was singing to it, and someone faceless but familiar was by her side, crying tears of happiness.

Only this time, the person hadn't been faceless. Katniss knew exactly who it was.

_Peeta._

Why had she been dreaming about Peeta and a baby?

She walked to the window, rubbing the raised, jagged mark on her arm as she watched the rain come down in sheets outside. The scar, like so many things in her life, was a mystery - she had no idea how she'd gotten it, just that she had the tendency to touch it any time she felt anxious.

Thunder rolled somewhere in the distance. Her fingers traced the scar.

It was as if her body remembered something she didn't.

And that's when it hit her like a bolt of lightning – her daughter had been born on a stormy night just like this one. She knew it. She just knew. It was an instinctive sort of awareness, the kind that lived deep down in her gut, in her bones, in the blood that flowed through her veins. Her body remembered it, like a scar.

Without even pausing to put on a jacket, Katniss tore out the front door and into the night.

* * *

Peeta could never sleep through stormy nights. He was already awake and fixing himself some tea when he heard a frantic pounding at the back door.

It was Katniss, standing there in only pyjamas and shoes, soaked from head to toe.

"Katniss?" he asked in disbelief.

"You're still here," she choked, almost as if she'd expected to find the house empty.

"Of course."

At that, she reached out to touch his face, and - finding it to be solid and real - burst into tears. Peeta caught her in his arms before she could crumple to the floor.

"Katniss? Katniss, what's the matter?"

"I remember," she wept against his neck. "I remember."

_The end_


End file.
